Articles Tagged withCA

Have you ever driven past an accident on the side of a highway and thought, “What in the world happened?” Sometimes it’s not easy to actually tell what happened at the scene of an accident, especially when you only have a few seconds to assess the scene before you drive right by.

Now you may not have to wonder about these accidents any longer. The Auto Insurance Center, an information and news site dedicated to keeping up with the latest in car insurance news, began researching the answer to that very question. The center combed through records in the United States from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatal Accident Reporting System, which has been keeping records on every serious and fatal car crash in the United States from 2009 to 2013.

The data itself showcased the number of pedestrian, driver, and passenger deaths that resulted from those accidents. When the center finished compiling their information, that made a color-coded map to show which fatal accident was the most common in each state. The map included nine colors:

This past May, we celebrated Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month in California, but this is really a topic that is applicable all year round. In 2013, about 14 percent of all vehicle fatalities were motorcyclists, which made them 16 times more likely to die while out on the road. Although motorcyclists only account for about three percent of drivers, it’s important to respect motorcyclists and share the road with them.

Of course, motorcyclists also have an obligation to drive safely and wear protective gear. After all, there are quite a lot of them in California. According to the latest numbers, there are about 830,000 motorcyclists registered in California, the most of any state in the country. In 2013, number showed that there were 485 motorcyclists killed in accidents on Californian roads and 13,143 were injured. To keep motorcyclists safe while on the road, there needs to be a joint effort between vehicle drivers and motorcyclists that promotes safe driving for everyone.

It is important that drivers remember to always share the road with motorcyclists. These cyclists have the exact say rights to the road as any other car and truck. As motorcycles are smaller and less noticeable than cars at times, it is very easy for them to move into another car’s blind spot. If a driver doesn’t see the cyclist, there’s a good chance the driver will hit the cyclist if the driver tries to make a turn or change lanes.

To most parents, there is nothing more terrifying than letting a teenager get his or her license and start driving. Parents tend to imagine every possible worst-case scenario – the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, a drunk driver hits the teen’s vehicle – and really, they have cause to worry.

A new report states that auto accidents are actually the number one killer of teenagers in the United States, beating out both homicide and suicide. The study, which was funded by the General Motors Foundation, says that both drivers and passengers are at risk.

The report was mostly based off a national survey that looked at 1,000 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 19. According to the report’s findings, 2,439 teenagers died in 2012 due to auto accidents on U.S. roads. Of those teenagers, about 56 percent of them were driving at the time, and 44 percent of them were passengers at the time. The study also found that more than half of those killed did not put on a seat belt.

California freeways are notorious for becoming overcrowded at certain times. The state is simply not able to keep up with the ever-growing need for more and wider freeways. Some of our highways and freeways are more heavily trafficked by big rigs than others. It doesn’t help when unscrupulous shipping and trucking companies overload the trailers to cut expenditures. Add to those issues the tired and overworked drivers pushing their trucks to the limit to make their schedules on time and it is no wonder California freeways are one of the country’s leaders in commercial trucking accidents.

Federal regulations and California law dictate all big rig drivers to operate under strict safety measures. Negligent drivers who do not adhere to the safety regulations cause freeway accidents and should be held responsible. Contact Moseley Collins today to discuss your options in a California freeway big rig accident. More and more freeway pileups containing an amalgam of passage cars and commercial trucks of various sizes are reported each month. Making matters worse, big rigs often follow each other closely on the freeway and when one loses control vehicles behind it have less time to react to the danger.